"No, it isn't! Not a bit curious." "Isn't it? Why not? I'm interested to hear." "Because I imagine happy things as well, stupid, and they come out top. If I worry over other people's troubles, I glory in their joy. You can't do one without the other; if you don't feel one you can't feel the other. You may never shed a tear in your life over an imaginary woe, but _have_ you ever wakened in the morning and thanked God because the housemaid's young man had come home from abroad?--Have you ever felt your soul flooded with joy when you saw the sun shining in through pink and white curtains on to a brand-new wall-paper you had just chosen? Did you feel as if you could have jumped over the moon, when the Czarina had a son?" "I--I was very glad." "Well, I wasn't! I cried with joy, and said my prayers all day long, and thought of her lying there, and hugged the thought of her happiness, the poor, beautiful, tragic thing! What _do_ you do, may I ask, if one of your own friends is in trouble, and doesn't see the way out?" "I--er,--well, if I can help him, I invariably do. For my own sake, as well as his. I like helping. Take it all round, it is the most agreeable sensation one can have. If the other fellow feels as light-hearted and generally bucked up afterwards as I do myself, he is jolly well off. But if I can't--" "Yes?" "Well! I don't worry. What's the use? It would do him no good for me to be miserable as well as himself." "The thought of him doesn't follow you wherever you go, like a nightmare, squeezing up your heart?" "Don't mix your metaphors, darling. That squeezes. Certainly not. I should call it weakness. I dismiss it from my mind." "Well, I think you are a callous wretch, and I like my own disposition a million times better than yours." "There is no discussion on that point is there? because I most heartily agree." "There you are, then!" cried Grizel triumphantly. "But you _will_ argue." She shook out the damp ball of a handkerchief, and held it flag-ways to the breeze, tilting her head to look into her husband's face. "Do I look very plain?" "Comparatively speaking--yes!" replied Martin, seizing on his revenge, whereupon Grizel proceeded to declaim in a loud, artificial voice: ... "`Teardrops still lingered on the long eyelashes; the lovely, mutinous face was wasted and ravaged with grief, yet never in her most queenly moments had she appeared to him more alluring and sweet. For weal or woe his life was in her hands.' ... Another fine instalment to be given in our next number!" She waved her hand and turned back to the house, while Martin, laughing, walked across the lawn to join the Squire.